Perspective rendering of the future Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, from canadianarchitect.com
The Aga Khan(آقا خان), spiritual leaderof the Ismaili Muslims, is celebrating his golden jubilee this year. Fittingly and well-deservedly, his media presence has been everywhere. The Aga Khan has spent his life promoting community development, pluralism, peace, and as a plus, a legacy of great architecture.
The New Ismaili Centre by Charles Correa, from canadianarchitect.com
The Aga Khan seems to have taken a liking for Canada, and we have two major projects under construction right now in Toronto and Ottawa. Toronto outbid London (England!) for the Aga Khan Museum, a three-part project consisting of museum, religious, and cultural centre.
The Fumihiko Maki designed Aga Khan Museum, from canadianarchitect.com
The designs are still being completed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Fumihiko Maki, celebrated architect Charles Correa, Vladimir Djurovik of Lebanon, with Moriyama & Teshima from Toronto overseeing the project construction. This is truly a stellar cast of architects, and I have high hopes that this will be the most exciting project in Toronto for years to come (complete in 2011).
View of Vladimir Djurovik’s landscaped gardens, from canadianarchitect.com
It is too bad though that the old Bata Shoe headquarters were demolished for this plan… As the Toronto Star’s Christopher Hume aptly remarked, “Surely there’s an element of irony when an architecturally worthy building must be destroyed in the name of culture.”
Canada’s second Aga Khan project is the Ottawa Centre of Pluralism, to be housed in the former building of the War Museum.
Aga Khan Centre of Pluralism in Ottawa, photo courtesy of the Government of Canada
Surprisingly enough, there do exist urban farms in Canadian cities.
Ottawa Central Experimental Farm from above, Image from Google Earth
One is the Ottawa Experimental Farm, which is very close to downtown (just southwest of Parliament Hill). This farm not only has a large swath of land dedicated to growing crops and testing out new cultivation techniques, it has an extensive built campus of research laboratories, government ministries, greenhouses, visitor facilities, and even an arboretum.
McGill University’s MacDonald Campus from above, Image from Google Earth
My trip to the automotive capital. Yes, it’s run down and there were a lot of abandoned buildings, but there was a lot of new activity too: the new compuware center in the heart of downtown, the newly renovated detroit institute for arts, the high-end malls in the suburbs. One day was definitely not enough time to see the city, and I could have easily spent a week there.
Michigan Central Station sits abandoned and awaiting future plans (photos: A Chau)
“Q: What must I do to be saved? A: Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (photo: J Chau)
The Ford Rouge river factory sits on a sprawling campus in Dearborn. (photo: A Chau)
The Detroit Institute for Arts renovation by Michael Graves is tasteful, mixing a modern style with relics from the past. Each section of the galleries subtly reflects the work on display, through Gothic Arches, careful stonework, or monumental squared columns. The DIA has one of the most extensive collections in all of the states. (photos: A Chau)
I would argue that it was in Detroit where the international style found its place. here is Minoru Yamasaki’s building at Wayne State. Detroit is also home to Mies Van Der Rohe’s Lafayette residences, and Albert Kahn’s many buildings. (photo: J Chau)
The Guardian building in downtown Detroit was recently renovated and restored by SmithGroup. (photo: A Chau)
This is a follow up to my earlier post about the amenities that can be found in the Toronto Hydro corridor lands.
CBC News (2005). A transmission tower looms in front of the CN Tower.
Hydro corridors, or electricity lines, are necessary for city development. The Finch hydro corridor carries transmission lines ranging in voltage up to 500kV and varies in width from 30 to 180 meters. This is a swath of mostly green land that cuts east-west across the entire city, and is sandwiched between residential, industrial, and commercial developments. The corridor creates barriers in the surrounding neighbourhoods: North York’s downtown skyscrapers are cut abruptly at the transmission lines, and the York University - Jane Finch neighbourhoods are insulated from one another by this open land.
Chau, Andrew (2008). Finch hydro corridor (in red) and its connections with existing bicycle paths (in green).
While the corridor acts as a barrier in certain communities, there are areas where the green space is a positive influence and supports a range of activities. These include parkland, transportation infrastructure, and sports facilities. The issue surrounding the Finch hydro corridor, and hydro corridors in general, is how they can be changed from an element that separates neighbourhoods, to a positive and unifying amenity. This is an issue of creative reuse of existing infrastructure corridors.
An entire Manila studio apartment (left) could fit inside the space of these Toronto dining and living rooms (right)
In Toronto, it means to the typical downtown urbanite, enough room for two comfy couches plus a t.v., a rug, and maybe an extensive collection of books. In a smaller row house, such as one in Bloor West, the dining and living rooms may together make up 200 sq.ft.
In Manila (the Philippines), 200 sq.ft. is a luxury studio condominium. These Avida Towers are currently under construction in the capital city. There are many apartments in Manila where entire families plus relatives live in this same 200 sq.ft.
Image courtesy of the American Geographic Institute
Ron Eglash gives an amazing TED talk about fractals found in African villages. He debunks a couple of widely held prejudices. One, that all natives would design with fractals. This isn’t true, because African natives are the only ones that build their villages in the fractal form. The other, that these fractals are based solely on intuition. Many are algorithmic and intentional, such as in cloth designs and even in divination rituals.
Image courtesy of Rajah on TechRepublic, created using Apophysis
These ideas of self-organization are in the brain, in ecological sustainability, the aids virus, capitalism… artists today are using fractals to generate incredible digital pieces. When will an architect design a building using fractals?
The Kowloon Walled City was an anomoly in Hong Kong’s history: a tiny (0.016 sq.mi.) enclave owned by China in the middle of British Hong Kong. I can’t help but notice the uncanny resemblance the city has to the ancient walled structures of the Hakka Chinese.
This video takes you through the market stalls and walks you through the city. At 6:00 you enter the narrow, dark paths that crisscross the walled city.
the idea of farms contained within skyscrapers aren’t new - in fact, a number of proposals have been floated in recent years: for new york city, las vegas, even toronto. mvrdv proposed a “pig city”. there’s an underground farm housed in a former bank vault underneath tokyo.
i wonder if the idea of a vertical farm is even economically feasible, given that there would need to be artificial sunlight in the buildings, watering pumped up tens of stories, the expenses for transportation and delivery of the crops, fertilizer, and soil, and the high cost of land in the city.
wouldn’t urban agriculture on existing rooftops, open areas in the city, be a much more feasible method to increase urban agriculture?
the city’s original structure was surprisingly similar to montreal’s. you can see where huge tracts of what used to be row housing have been emptied out. the city is now more like the suburbs than anything else.
detroit’s residential neighbourhoods (downtown is just past the cloverleaf in the bottom right) look like farmland
much has been written on the demise of inner-city detroit.
abandoned united artists theatre hidden by the people mover, from forgottendetroit.com
while its downtown core has been languishing, the suburbs around the city have been growing and prospering. 80% of the population in the detroit metro region lives in the periphery. to make the point even clearer, detroit is the poorest city in the usa, while oakland county, just to the north, is the nation’s second-richest.
detroit is emblematic of the worldwide trend of shrinking city cores and ballooning periphery suburbs, a trend that began with ebenezer howard and the garden city (1950s). it is similar to new orleans’ problems after katrina, its many abandoned neighbourhoods and population that has been more than halved.
abandoned michigan central station, from forgottendetroit.com
there has been much written on how to rehabilitate detroit: should planners facilitate the city’s thinning out by demolishing the remains, abandon whole parts altogether, create more suburban models in the inner city?
a number of projects have dealt with suburbanizing/re-naturalizing the city:
